Book Review
Title: Hold Back the Tide
Author: Melinda Salisbury
Genre: YA/Horror/Fantasy
Rating: ***
Review: I have read and liked Salisbury’s other books including the Sin Eater’s Daughter but I didn’t know anything about Hold Back the Tide. We are introduced to Alva Douglas as she recites the rules for living with a murderer and we don’t understand why she is telling us this until we are introduced to her father, Lachlan Douglas. The Douglas family are the keepers of the loch and are charged with tending to it as the mill in the village, the source of the village’s income depends on the loch for its water supply. Alva has been helping her father since she was little in the duties that the keeper’s have but lately more and more has fallen to her while her father has neglected to inform the villagers that the loch level is dropping which could spell disaster for the mill. However, this isn’t what is interesting, what’s interesting is that Alva’s father murderer her mother but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him so he walked free but she knows the truth and has been putting a plan together to run away as soon as she can which doesn’t seem like it is far away. She gets help from her friend, Murren “Ren” Ross who gets items that she needs without her father knowing about them. While this opening was interesting and I was struggling to place the timeframe as some things make the book seem almost historical like flintlock pistols but other things seem quite modern in comparison so I hope that will be cleared up soon. Alva is also becoming more suspicious of her father and feels that he knows her plans when a net is damaged but not by an animal or weather, to Alva it seems like the net was cut with a knife but she says nothing as she doesn’t want her father to know what she knows.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, I was intriguing but not super invested in the story so I am hoping it picks up soon. This section of the novel doesn’t really change from the first part as we continue to follow Alva in her every day life leading up to the day she is planning on leaving the village for good as she has a job waiting for her. I also managed with the help of Google to figure out the time period of the novel as it isn’t clear at all but Alva mentions her father owning a revolved with an inlaid grip which was invented around 1854. Some of the language used is old Scottish I believe so it took a few trips to Google to figure out what the words meant which made it slow and a little difficult to read. The only exciting thing to come out of this section of the novel is that Ren figures out that Alva is planning to run away despite her weak protests and wants to go with her as he is just as much of an outcast as Alva. We also get some history into the Duncan family and some small events leading up to the death of Alva’s mother.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Alva and Ren having a falling out after the summer festival as he wants to go with her and she refuses to take him with her as it wouldn’t fit with her plan but she seems to be coming to terms with the lingering feelings she has for Ren. However, the best part about this section of the book was learning more about Alva’s family. We learn that Alva had a happy childhood until her mother fell pregnant with a second child, as we learn that Giles was in love with Alva’s mother and was even willing to take Alva as his own child but not this second child but Alva’s mother responds by saying she loves Lachlan and she would never leave him. We soon learn that she miscarried this child and fell into a deep depression but as Lachlan had to work in order to provide for them, Alva was often left alone and neglected as her mother often forgot to feed her. This continued for quite a long time before her mother was shot four times with the revolver and when Alva believes her father dumped her mother’s body in the loch, she stole the revolver which she has in her possession until this very day even going as far as to purchase more bullets for it as there are only 2 left. On her way home from the festival, she comes face to face with a horrifying creature which I wasn’t expecting at all and her father protects her from it. The following morning, she finds she has been locked in and can’t leave which means she won’t make it to the meeting point for her ride out of the village. However, during her search for the key she finds some old logs which images of the creatures and her mind begins wondering what they are when Ren arrives to free her from the cottage but while she is showing him with books, he discovers her bag she has packed but before anything can be discussed her father arrives home.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, things were becoming more interesting as there is still a mystery surrounding the death of Alva’s mother and I am not convinced that Lachlan did it and the introduction of these mysterious creatures. There have also been two girls that have gone missing one of which is heavily pregnant and blame is being pinned on Lachlan as everyone believes that he killed Alva’s mother years before but I am sure that the creatures are at fault for this. Her father returned to see the state of the house and immediately knows what Alva has done and when it seems like he is going to kill her Alva confesses she knew that her father killed her mother. However, before her father can say anything on the matter, Giles bursts in with some others and arrests him, taking Lachlan’s silence as an admission of his guilt but offers Alva a place with him which she doesn’t really want. While Giles is hauling her father away, Alva is torn between staying and leaving but she writes everything in a letter and asks Ren to give it to Maggie before heading to the meeting point, she had arranged. However, Giles catches her in the act of leaving and takes her to his home where he locks her in the attic before attempting to make Alva dress in her mother’s old clothes and presumably sexual assault her but Alva gets the upper hand making Giles shoot himself in the leg and smothering him until he passes out. Giles’s son Gavan listen to the tale and agrees to help Alva by arranging for her to borrow a donkey to get into town and meet the stagecoach she needs but he needs her help in proving the monsters exist and they decide the only way is to catch one. They decide to find Ren first but he isn’t at any of his usual places so they head back up the mountain to Alva’s home when the monsters are upon them. They managed to make it inside only to find that Ren never left and they are also seemingly trapped now until the monsters leave. The pace ramped up majorly here and, in my opinion, it became too quick as you couldn’t really focus on anything before being shoved forward in the story.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, the trio works together to catch one of the creatures in the traps used for the mountain lions but when they emerge at dawn, they realise to their horror that the sun destroys the creatures turning them to ash. Alva’s gives up her chance at leaving in order for them to try again and they modify the traps so that one of them can act as bait since Alva decoded some of the old records that show human sacrifices work best but the creatures that arrive that night aren’t blind like the other one Alva saw and won’t enter the trap until she cuts herself. However, things go wrong from there, they do manage to trap one creature but the other begins trying to free the other one which has attacked Gavan. Alva herself in attacked and passed out after hitting her head and when she awakens, she is in the creature’s den along with Cora and Hattie, although Hattie is dead. Alva and Cora work together and find out that they aren’t in tunnels as Alva first believed but they have been dropped down a hole. Cora helps Alva climb out into the wider labyrinth but she can’t pull Cora up so she sends Alva on ahead and she promises to return although there is a good chance that both could be dead before the end of the novel. Throughout all this we don’t know what has befallen Gavan and Ren or why the creatures are only taking women but hopefully these questions will be answered soon.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Alva escapes from the creature’s den and return to town to find Maggie and explain what happened. There she learns that Ren and Gavan are both still alive too but they don’t want to leave town to find Cora, not because they don’t care for her but because Giles is out for revenge. When he learns where Alva he drags her out dislocating her shoulder intending to take her to prison but other speak up and defend her account of the monsters. The town immediately sets a trap for the creatures and Alva is given the choice between spending the night at Giles’ house or a cell and she chooses the cells, only to be locked into the one next to her father. The pair watch in horror as the creatures arrive including the one Alva shot and it seems to remember her but this is overshadowed when three men are killed and Alva sees the creatures wearing the faces of the dead. Her father then explains that the creatures can turn normal people into what they are as they have two sets of teeth, one for eating and the other for turning. He explains that her mother was bitten during the walks she used to take around the loch after the miscarriage and the night he supposedly shot her was because she tried to attack him before fleeing to join the other creatures which proves his innocence. He was trying to keep it hidden from Alva until she was old enough to make the choice about whether or not she wanted to take on that responsibility but Giles’ greed with the mill changed that. Now the questions comes what is going to happen when the town learns that their loved ones might have been turned into monsters instead of being killed by them and what fate has in store for Alva and her father.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, Ren frees Alva and her father from prison and tells Alva that Giles has taken the creature that used to be James to be tortured but she now knows from her father that silver kills the creatures as well as sunlight and puts James out of his misery. She explains everything and takes charge of the town getting a party together to rescue Cora only to learn that her father has already headed into the tunnels and she goes after him. Alva gets into the tunnels and immediately heads for Cora who is still alive and gets her out of the tunnels before returning to find the creature that used to be her mother has killed her father. Alva’s mother still remembers her and wants Alva to become one of them and is ready to bite her when Giles appears declaring his love for Alva’s mother but she isn’t interested and Giles actually ends up killing her which breaks his heart and alerts all the other creatures to where they are. However, Alva is in luck as a party arrives and they cause an explosion to collapse the tunnels but they don’t know if the creatures are dead. Alva and Gavan plan to work together to keep the village alive without running to loch dry. However, Alva realises that she has been bitten which she explains to Ren and asks him to shoot her before she turns. The ending itself is a cliff-hanger as Alva and Ren are in bed with Alva turning to see the sunrise as the novel end. Overall, the first half of Hold Back the Tide was slow and quite boring but it really picked up after the creatures were introduced but the second half also felt really rushed and key story elements weren’t expanded upon for this reason. I personally felt if the monsters had been introduced earlier rather than just focusing on Alva’s everyday life and escape plan those elements could have been expanded on and explained better and it would have been a more satisfying read but I do like were Salisbury is going with her writing.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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